


Benefits Package

by OracleGlass



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crack, F/M, Fluff, Shameless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OracleGlass/pseuds/OracleGlass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started out like this:<br/>Somebody stop me from writing a billion-page Mary Sue fic with myself as the shy yet endearingly brainy registrar for Tony Stark's private art collection, wherein he lets down my hair, says, "Why, Miss Mystic, you're beautiful!" and then we proceed with the sexin'.</p><p>Because otherwise I'll do it. Anything is better than sitting here contemplating how sore my forearms are from hefting bookboxes all morning.</p><p>And instead of people saying, "Don't do it!" they encouraged me. So I wrote it. Because I am shameless. Essentially this is the sort of story that most people write and then shut away into a drawer, but oh, well.</p><p>Disclaimer: Tony Stark is not mine, but if he was mine I'd totally be gunning for the job of managing his art collection. The benefits would be fantastic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Benefits Package

Outside it was a gorgeous, balmy blue-sky sort of afternoon, but I had no knowledge of this since I was in the vault, making sure the Pop Art had been sufficiently separated from the Op Art and that the Magrittes were safely put away after their trip to the National Gallery.

Crate storage had gotten sadly disarranged, so I had worn my grubbiest jeans with the purple paint splatters on them (after staring at the bare walls of my office for years, I had finally grown rebellious and painted them myself), a pink My Little Pony t-shirt, and battered tennis shoes. I had my hair up in a bun anchored by two pencils, but tiny demon tendrils had escaped from confinement to stand up Medusa-like around my head. The morning had been spent shoving empty crates around until they were once again in tidy rows, and I was now taking the afternoon to do something less strenuous – namely staring at the painting racks with a clipboard and a vacant expression as my brain took a short holiday.

“I don’t think they’ve moved. Are you waiting for them to move?” The voice came out of nowhere and I yipped in terror and dropped my clipboard, spinning around.

It was my boss. Not that I had ever seen him in person before, but when your boss happens to be Mr. Tony Stark, gajillionare and wacky genius inventor, you know what he looks like even if he’s never actually set foot in your office. His suit and tie were sleekly gorgeous, but the tie was loosened as if tugged at in impatience, and his hair was slightly rumpled. There was also…was that grease under his fingernails?

He walked further into the vault, cocking his head and surveying the rack of paintings. “Nope, these are paintings. They definitely don’t move. That’s another kind of art. You should know that, right? I’m pretty sure I hired you because you know about art.”

“I…um…they’re…er…” I flailed around and finally settled on, “Hello, Mr. Stark. May I help you with something?”

“I need some art. So I came to where my art is.”

I blinked at him and gestured at the giant vault that contained the Stark collection – a vast trove that Mr. Stark’s father had begun and that he himself had continued. “Uh, that’s right, Mr. Stark. You have art. Lots of art. Pretty art.” I bit my tongue. “Er, pretty impressive art, that is. Impressive, expensive, art. In large quantities.”

He shot me a look and I tried to evaporate on the spot. Not only was I being an idiot in front of my boss, I was being a sweaty, My-Little-Pony-teeshirt-wearing idiot in front of my very extremely attractive boss, who no doubt was wondering what sort of mental patient his human resources department had found to watchdog his valuables.

He stared at me for a moment, and then grinned. It was quite a nice grin, like a little boy who’s just been given an ice cream. “Architectural Digest wants to photograph the house, and me in it. They said they wanted to use some of my collection in the shoot. So here I am.”

“You’re going to pick the art for them?”

“Yup. Because it’s getting me out of a really boring meeting on stock options. I told Obi that I had a really urgent prior appointment.”

“Er, but Mr. Stark…” I realized that asking him if he knew anything about art could end up with me getting fired from the best job I’d ever had, so I let the sentence drop there. Although I suspected that he could guess what I was thinking, because he shot me a distinctly mischievous look before turning around to explore the vault.

He wandered down a row, pulling out a different rack of paintings than the one I had been staring at– mostly small French and English landscapes. “Besides, I keep forgetting what I have in here. These are kinda boring.” He dismissed the landscapes, and plunged deeper into the warehouse. I followed behind, pushing the landscapes rack back into place and wondering if I could tell him to stop touching things. Probably not. It was all his stuff, after all.

“Oooh.” He stopped in front of a huge Rothko canvas, a deep red rectangle with a vivid orange line and two paler tones bisecting it. “That’s neat. Let’s use that one. I can feel it humming. Cool.”

I dutifully wrote it down and proceeded to shadow my boss as he roamed through the huge warehouse. He opened drawers, walked around sculptures looking thoughtful, and pulled out more painting racks willy-nilly. I managed to slip my gloves on and get between him and a Brancusi bronze, and prevented him from digging through a box of photographs (Abbott, Bernice to Arbus, Diane - his dad had loved photography, and we had a huge room devoted to his collection). It was like trying to keep an enthusiastic terrier from digging up the flowerbeds, but by the time we had made a circuit around the entire place I had a five page list and a raging headache to go along with it. He had chosen a maddeningly eclectic group – a Rembrandt self-portrait, Kwong Chi Tseng's World Trade Center photo from his Expeditionary Series (ouch), a series of tiny French paintings (you had to get right up to them before you realized how naughty they were), an O’Keefe (not one of the flowers but an early one of New York City, a Sally Mann photograph as well as two Graciela Iturbides, a haunting de Chirico street scene (one of my favorites in the collection) as well as a David Hockney (that I kinda hated, but oh well) and a tiny little panel from a Sienese altarpiece showing Saint Lucy holding her eyeballs on a plate that made him chortle delightedly.

“Do I have a Jackson Pollock? I should have one.” He was crushed when I informed him that the collection lacked that particular artist. “If one comes on the market, let me know. I should have a Pollock.”

I promised to keep an ear to the ground. “They don’t come up for sale often. And when they do, they’re not cheap.”

“That is definitely not going to be a problem.”

I got him out of the warehouse and back to my office where he entertained himself with the magnetic poetry kit that decorated the ends of a double row of file cabinets, while I phoned up his assistant and got actual dates and times to bring the pieces over and have them installed.

By the time I put the phone down, he had covered my file cabinets with rude limericks and was staring in some disbelief at my purple office walls. “I’m not sure what this place says about your aesthetics. Seriously, purple?”

I was immediately indignant. “It was cheerful! Having no windows and white walls everywhere was driving me batty!"

"Yeah, but you're also wearing a t-shirt with ponies on it. Ponies and purple walls. Are you sure you know anything about good art?"

I spluttered. Clearly I had no real excuse for the t-shirt, but I would defend my color choices to the death. "It’s a very tasteful purple. It’s supposed to calm the emotions. I chose it after hours of deliberation!”

“I’m not sure it’s working.” He walked over to where I sat at my desk, leaned over and deftly pulled free the pencils that were keeping my hair up, causing my makeshift bun to unravel and my hair to tumble back down around my shoulders. He nodded in approval. “I like it better down. And I’m not feeling very calm in my emotions right now.”

It’s possible that I made a very quiet “eeep” noise at this point. And gee, look at that – my headache was gone.

His hand was at the back of my neck now, pulling me towards him. His lips were salty and insistent. When he broke off the kiss, I was half-sprawled across my desk, flushed and stammering. He grinned at me again, and whatever resistance I may have been feeling up to this point (none, actually) melted away completely. He walked around my desk and pulled me up against him, his arms around my waist. Pressing his cheek against mine, he murmured, “I may not know art…but I know what I like.”


End file.
